'Law & Order' And Lobbying

Republicans pining for a Fred Thompson presidential bid contend the "Law & Order" star would make a strong candidate because of his experience as a senator, federal prosecutor and Watergate investigation counsel, as well as his conservative credentials and fame as a television and movie actor.

But supporters rarely focus on another hat he wore before and after his eight years in the Senate: lobbyist.

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The role could be an issue if he seeks to move from his current flirtation with running, which has generated escalating poll numbers and buzz, to actually running, which would subject him to a heightened level of scrutiny.

Over about two decades of lobbying (during which he also acted and practiced law), Thompson made nearly $1.3 million and represented clients including a British reinsurance company facing billions of dollars in asbestos claims, Canadian-owned cable companies, and deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to government documents and media accounts from his first run for the Senate in 1994.

During that special election to fill the Tennessee seat vacated by Al Gore's ascendance to the vice presidency, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), Thompson's opponent, had blasted him as "a Gucci-wearing, Lincoln-driving, Perrier-drinking, Grey Poupon-spreading millionaire Washington special interest lobbyist."

But Republican Thompson crushed Cooper, 61 to 39 percent. That, however, was in a watershed Republican year, and it was before the Jack Abramoff scandal tarred lobbyists in the public's mind as corrupt, self-dealing influence peddlers.

Lobbying accounted for only a fraction of Thompson's income, said his spokesman, Mark Corallo. The former senator is not lobbying now and has no plans to do so, Corallo said, "but he's not going to foreclose any options."

Nor will Thompson hide from his past if he runs, the spokesman said.

"There's nothing wrong with lobbying. It's an honorable profession," Corallo said. "Let's face it: If you're a politician, you're being lobbied on a daily basis. So it's just not an issue."

But it will become one if Thompson declares his candidacy, aides for two Republican presidential candidates predicted.

"These would be logical lines of attack," one said, though both said their campaigns have yet to build opposition research files on Thompson’s lobbying.

"In politics, everything is fair game," Wamp said. "But I don't think anybody sees Fred Thompson as a lobbyist. They see him as a senator, and I think they will view him as a president." Thompson plans to huddle with lawmakers on Capitol Hill this month to gauge support, Wamp said, adding that a number have signed on to help Thompson should he decide to run.

Wamp was not familiar with the specifics of some of Thompson's lobbying work. But he called the lobbying a "limited" part of a résumé that includes asking the Watergate congressional investigation hearing question that exposed President Richard M. Nixon's secret recording system, helping uncover a payoff scheme that landed a Tennessee governor in prison and playing a host of television and movie roles, including his ongoing portrayal of the quick-witted, drawling Manhattan District Attorney Arthur Branch on the popular NBC cops-and-courts television drama "Law & Order."

Thompson's commanding presence, background and conservatism bring to mind another actor-turned-pol, Wamp said. "The whole thing is very Reagan-esque. The whole story."

Thompson cruised to a full Senate term in 1996 but decided not to run again in 2002. A year after stepping down, he registered to lobby for British reinsurance company Equitas Ltd.

The company paid him $760,000 to guard its interests against several bills seeking to protect businesses from asbestos lawsuits, according to records Thompson filed with the Senate.

The legislation died, and Thompson this year filed papers ending his relationship with Equitas, the only client on whose behalf Thompson registered to lobby after leaving the Senate.

"We were very satisfied with his representation," Equitas spokesman Jon Nash said in an e-mail. The company, which spent $5.3 million on a team of lobbyists from eight firms from 2004 to 2006, wanted Thompson, Nash explained, because "we needed help in lobbying Republicans in the Senate, and in addition, as a former senator from Tennessee, he had a good relationship with the then-majority leader, Sen. Frist," also a Tennessee Republican.

The provisions that concerned Equitas were removed from the last version of the legislation, according to a lobbyist with a Republican background who worked on the issue, and said Thompson had the ability to become a successful K Streeter.

"He gets into the weeds of an issue," the lobbyist said, adding that lawmakers' doors opened easily for Thompson, though not necessarily because he was a former colleague. "He's well-received on the Hill in no small part because of his Hollywood status. People like to mingle with him."

Thompson appears to have earned less money lobbying before serving in the Senate. But it's difficult to trace lobbying work done before 1995; before then, Congress did not require lobbyists to report how much clients paid them, and records are not easily searchable by lobbyists' names.

Thompson did filepapers with the Justice Department to represent Haitian President Aristide in October 1991, two weeks after Aristide was overthrown. The filing lists Thompson as a member of the Washington-based law firm Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn and says he intended to lobby Congress, the State Department and the White House "in order to obtain the restoration of the democratically elected government of the Republic of Haiti."

Corallo had a different take, asserting Thompson "didn't file papers to represent President Aristide. He filed papers to discuss the Haitian embargo." And Corallo said Thompson was not paid for his Haiti work, which consisted of a single telephone call to then-White House Chief of Staff John Sununu.

"That's the only thing he ever did on that. So that's that," Corallo said, adding that Thompson is no longer associated with Arent Fox or any other law or lobbying firm.

From 1975 to 1993, Thompson was paid $507,000 lobbying for six clients, according to a 1994 article in the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

Corallo said Thompson's camp assumes the Commercial Appeal report is accurate. But he declined to provide The Politico with information on lobbying payments to Thompson.

"It being so far back, that's an awful undue pressure, burden for the senator to have to go dragging back through records," Corallo said.

During the 1994 campaign, Cooper said Thompson lobbied for legislation that caused the collapse of the savings and loan industry and against a bill that would have limited foreign involvement in the U.S. cable industry.

Thompson's camp shrugged off those criticisms, according to press reports at the time, which quoted his aides as saying he had worked on earlier savings and loans legislation that was rolled into the controversial 1982 legislation and had pushed for more competition in cable.

If Thompson declares for president, his opponents would be ill-advised to rehash Cooper's 1994 strategy, Corallo said.

"I really can't see any of the candidates wasting their time attacking him for doing things that were perfectly legal, honorable, ethical and public," Corallo said. "It's just not a big deal."